In the automated cooking of food products, it is known to rotate the food being cooked in an oven as it is carried on hangers along an oven path by an endless conveyor past heating elements. A previously known apparatus for achieving this result was disclosed by Hemley in U.S. Pat. No. 2,333,175. It is also known to mount food on a spit carried by a holding arm on an endless carrier in a continuous fashion between infra-red radiant gas heaters as disclosed by Otsuka in U.S. Pat. No. 3,563,160. Otsuka discloses a device for cooking spit carried food and it achieves the result by intermittently exposing the food to an uncovered heater while carrying it over a travel path. However, Otsuka does not provide an oven chamber for cooking the food. Neither of the preceding devices teach a method of constantly directly exposing food in a single open cooking oven chamber to a central heating element array in order to broil the food. Additionally, neither device monitors the done-ness of food being cooked, and neither allows for preselected arrangement of food products to achieve desired seasoning between food products from juice drippage vertically descending on vertically arrayed food products.
Additional prior art patents of general interest are: 1,638,452; 2,728,286; 3,003,409; 4,366,182 and 4,401,018.
An object of the present invention is to provide an improved apparatus and method for efficiently cooking vertically suspended food products on a skewer. Another object is to provide an oven of the above character in a single open cooking oven chamber with a centrally arranged heating element array therein and wherein food is cooked while traveling in an endless horizontal path encircling such array while constantly directly and indirectly exposing such food products to radiant and convection heat generated by such array throughout the entire travel path therein. An additional object is to provide for monitoring of food products carried on a particular skewer in the oven and enable easy determination of done-ness of such particular products as a function of oven travel time. Still another object is to facilitate cooking of shish kebobs in a manner suited for a fast-food-type continuous cooking operation, and to enable a preselected drippage of juices from the cooking process to cause automatic basting of flavors and spices between particular food products. Further objects are to provide in an oven and method of the aforesaid character inexpensive drip collection means oriented and arranged to facilitate fast and easy clean-up of juice drippage from the cooking process, as well as fully effective containment of juices therefrom to provide for a cleaner cooking operation, and contribute to a substantially smokeless mode of cooking of food products within the oven.